Denmark's largest research university, excelling in genomics, CRISPR, microbiome science, ancient DNA, and climate research across 696 H2020 projects.
The University of Copenhagen is Denmark's largest research university, spanning life sciences, health, natural sciences, and humanities. Under H2020, it has been a major host for Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellows and ERC grantees, attracting top early-career researchers across genomics, ancient DNA, climate science, and biomedicine. Beyond training, UCPH runs large collaborative projects in food protein development, microbiome research, CRISPR gene editing, and clinical trials — translating fundamental discovery into applied health and agricultural outcomes. With 696 H2020 projects and EUR 365M in EC funding, it operates as one of Europe's most active university research hubs.
Recurring keywords across dozens of projects including ancient DNA, ancient proteins, genomics, proteomics, and mass spectrometry — with projects like SCORA on regulatory architectures and BASE-LiNE Earth using isotope/mass-spec methods.
Microbiome is a top-3 keyword overall with strong presence in recent projects, connected to inflammatory bowel disease, multi-omics, and organoid research.
CRISPR and Cas9 appear prominently in recent-period keywords, reflecting a concentrated push into gene editing tools and applications.
Climate change is the most frequent keyword across both periods, supported by environment and sustainability keywords, and projects like ESMERALDA on ecosystem services mapping.
43 Food & Agriculture sector projects including PROTEIN2FOOD (EUR 2.4M, coordinator) on sustainable food protein, plus food safety projects like ParaFishControl and List_MAPS.
Organoids, clinical trials, biomarkers, and translational research are all recent-period keywords, indicating a growing focus on bench-to-bedside pipelines in cancer and disease modeling.
In the early H2020 period (2015–2018), UCPH's signature strengths centered on ancient DNA, biodiversity, regenerative medicine, and epidemiology — reflecting its historical excellence in evolutionary biology and population studies. By 2019–2022, the focus shifted markedly toward CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, microbiome science, organoid models, multi-omics integration, and deep learning — all pointing to a university that has rapidly built capacity in modern molecular and computational biology. Climate change remained a constant thread throughout, but the tools and approaches became more data-intensive and translational over time.
UCPH is moving from descriptive biological research toward interventional and computational approaches — CRISPR editing, organoid disease models, deep learning, and multi-omics integration — making it an increasingly strong partner for applied biotech and precision medicine collaborations.
UCPH coordinates 62% of its H2020 projects, but this high number is largely driven by hosting Marie Curie Individual Fellowships (273 MSCA-IF grants) and ERC Starting Grants (41), where the host institution is automatically the coordinator. In large collaborative projects (RIA, 136 projects), it takes both coordinator and partner roles flexibly. With 2,583 unique consortium partners across 89 countries, UCPH operates as a massive network hub — it does not rely on a small circle of repeat partners but connects broadly across European and global research communities.
UCPH has worked with 2,583 distinct partner organizations across 89 countries, making it one of the most connected universities in H2020. Its network spans virtually all of Europe plus significant links to institutions in Africa, Asia, and the Americas through food security, climate, and global health projects.
UCPH combines world-leading expertise in ancient DNA and evolutionary genomics (a field it essentially pioneered) with rapidly growing capacity in CRISPR gene editing, microbiome science, and computational biology — a combination few universities can match. Its massive fellowship intake (273 MSCA-IF fellows) means it continuously refreshes its talent pool and maintains connections to researchers worldwide. For consortium builders, UCPH offers the rare combination of deep fundamental science credibility, strong translational ambition in health and food, and a network that reaches 89 countries.
